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Entry tags:
FIC: FOUR OF CLUBS, PART 6
Title: Four of Clubs
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
Project codename LUCID - a device for combating the illegal use of another device. The anti-PASIV. I found it funny that the only way to fight the illicit use of technology was with more, in an age where less technology was supposed to be required. Hell, my phone did more shit than my first computer. But there was always that question of how to combat mindcrime - which to that point hadn't gotten that ambitious. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take launch codes from the mind of some third world dictator, we figured. So we were behind, but trying to anticipate where the technology would next be used and how. To keep ahead of the problem as best we could - or ahead of where the problem would be when the technology was finally ready.
The actual original prototype wasn't too impressive. It drew from a half million images to create a rough visual representation, and I mean very rough. Soundless. But it caught the first dream I showed it okay. It seemed a bit like a fortune telling sort of trick, vague enough to be close no matter what I'd dreamed. The scientists were proud, though, and Cixous said it'd get a hell of a lot better as it learned to better interpret our patterns of though and provide visual information pulled directly from us instead of mocked up from a database.
Like a speech to text program, it had to learn our 'voice' through exposure, correction, re-exposure, re-correction.
Like teaching a kid, only the kid had to produce visual data from our dreams. Sound was a secondary goal. After that, we'd learn to use it to access other active networks, and see if we could record the dreams of others as interpreted through our known-quantity thought patterns. That shouldn't be the hard part. The brain almost instinctively worked to dreamshare, once the PASIV had set up the local neural network for the Somnacin users. Strange to think the chemical had first been in-use - unrefined, of course, by aboriginal Australians. For how long, god only knows.
We could not sign enough times. Damage claim waivers, affidavits of risk assessment and understanding, oaths of secrecy and our special clearance paperwork. The long and short of it being that we'd be in D.C. for the foreseeable future.
I had to go back to sort my shit in Chicago the second week, get out of my apartment, that sort of shit. Con was keeping his, and his Ma would drive up and keep it tidied every couple weeks, he said. Offered to have her look after my place too, if I wanted.
I thought of what Con's Ma might find, poking around in my apartment and declined. I didn't really want that place anymore anyway. I figured when we finally got back - if we weren't the permanent pets of the D.C. branch after this - I'd find another place easy enough.
Con drove me to the airport like a sport, both of us still bursting with enthusiasm, and we drank shitty airport coffee after I'd checked in and while I waited for my plane to stop delaying.
"Hey, would you turn my bike over?" Constantine asked, as if in after-thought. He fished his keys out of his pocket and pulled the black topped Suzuki key out from the rest, followed it with his apartment key. I'd been dying to try his bike since I'd seen the thing, but had never had good opportunity to ask. It's not the sort of bike I'd have matched to Constantine - who I'd have been reluctant to guess owned a bike at all, except I'd seen it myself.
"Yeah," I said, keeping it casual. Would I put myself in the saddle of one of the fastest street legal bikes in production today? Is that even a fucking question? I took the keys, one to get into his place and fetch the safety gear, the other for his bike. The Hayabusa.
"Thanks, man. It's not good for it to just sit too long. Might be a little slow even at this point." I could tell leaving his machine even this long was killing him a bit. I knew what it was like to not have something you wanted.
"Don't worry, I'll flush it out and get it going," I promised, and got on the plane - already making plans. I'd take the bike back - ride it down to D.C. It'd take a few extra days and probably leave me saddlesore as all hell, but it'd be worth every second. Not just for him either - I wanted some quality time with that bike. His bike.
On the plane, I tucked the keys into my wallet, had a brief peek at the card tucked away in there - since I couldn't test reality on a plane with my radio without riling all kinds of FCC regulations - and I wasn't convinced there was anything amiss anyway. Just checking.
It didn't take me too long to deal with my apartment. I packed a little stuff - clothes, every day items, and mailed it ahead of myself back to D.C. Threw away the bad food in my fridge, put the canned goods out for Harvesters. The rest, I took to good will and dumped. My car was even a lease, so I just took that back, too. The dealership kicked the tires, hemmed and hawed, and finally we shook hands, even. I didn't care - I'd get another lease in D.C. What I wanted, as I took the bus over to Con's place, was to get my hands on the Hayabusa.
It was a little surreal, heading into his place when I knew he was halfway across the country. Four years later and he even still had the same dog leash on the peg by the door, the collar with tags from '04. Just something that was never in the way enough for him to get up the heart to get rid of it. I left a note for his Ma about the bike, then found his riding jacket, his helmet, and the spare. Theoretically, so he could take someone along, but I'd never seen him let anyone ride double. The spare was too small for my head, so I wore Con's. The sensation was somewhere between a kid playing dress up, in leather no less, and feeling like I should worry about this becoming some sort of new fetish for me.
The jacket smelled like Con's aftershave, like old rides in the sun. The helmet still carried the scent of his shampoo. I took it off quickly - too close, too much of him and yeah, I had permission, but not to do this. I'd get the bike started, then deal with the rest of it.
So maybe, as I approached that powerful machine of Constantine's, I was in an even less normal frame of mind than I usually am. I never liked rice rockets before I met him, fast or not. I made an exception for the Hayabusa. It was Constantine's, a fact that I felt acutely as I pulled off the cover and settled into the saddle.
It felt a bit strange, like it was used to a whole other body - and of course it was but I had to shift around until I realized I was supposed to almost lie forward in the seat, the padding positioned to support me that way, as I'd seen Con ride the thing.
I had a moment, after I put the key in the ignition, where my mind blanked on how to get it started. I hadn't ridden at all in a while, and I pulled out my cell phone to call Con so he could walk me through it, but after the second ring I remembered. I clicked the phone closed again and hit the electric starter, feeling like an idiot.
The bike coughed, made a bit of a shrill protest, and then turned over roughly, shocking its whole frame with reverberations as the powerful engine caught. The meters turned on, cycled, then read, but my mind went away briefly as it idled roughly between my legs. God, powerful. Harsh, too, from sitting. The engine churned in subtle vibrations - not so subtle as they transferred through the frame and saddle, seeming to head straight to my crotch.
I couldn't help it. I put one hand down on the front of the seat, fingers splaying forward over the gas tank, and arched my back, rubbing myself against the leather. Jesus, and Con had been keeping this all to himself.
I arched into it a few times, then reached for the accelerator and revved the engine which growled louder and covered my gasping. I didn't care, suddenly, I was going to rub myself on Con's fucking bike until I came and figure out what to do about my pants later.
A sudden counter vibration startled me, and I dropped my hand off the accelerator, dazedly trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. It wasn't the bike, though - it was my cell phone going off in my pocket, fuck. I shouldn't have answered it, didn't know how I'd keep myself in check with his voice in my ear - but suddenly I had to hear him. Needed it.
"Serkey," I answered - the usual way at least, best I could as I rubbed lewdly on the seat.
"Everything okay? Missed your call." Constantine said, utterly clueless. For the best, but his voice is just what I wanted. I push down harder.
"Yeah, Con," I said, controlling my tone. "I just forgot how to start - how to start your bike for a second."
I bit my lip against a groan, reached again, revved, and - that, that was almost it.
"Sounds like you remembered. It go okay for you?" he asks, his tone some how found and proud, like I have to fucking love the bike now that I've been on it, and I fucking do, but he'd never imagine this. Or maybe he did, sometimes I don't know. He started talking about what I'd need to know, riding. Expecting me to take it for a spin, but my concentration just wouldn't split that far - all I knew was that his voice was in my ears, and that fucking bike was growling away , smoothing out regular, and I shot my fucking load. Somehow, I stayed quiet, even though I came hard enough for some to even make it past my jeans in an obscene smear on the leather.
"What are you doing to my bike?" Con asked, into my silence.
"Nothing. I thought I heard a problem - " I answered, breathless and distracted. There was a smear of darkness on the saddle leather, and I reached out with my free hand, carefully rubbed it in with my thumb.
"Sounds fine to me," Con said, and I laughed a little, still not quite back.
"Yeah," I said, covered the receiver with my thumb as I gasped in air, then slid it off again to finish. "Yeah, must have been wrong. Just double-checking."
"You got it now?" He laughed, and I almost nodded, as if he were right there.
"Yeah. Gonna take it out and get it going for you," I told him, my voice rough, failing to make that sound like anything but a proposition. "Call you later."
-
He was overjoyed when I showed up with the bike. Some paranoid part of me almost thought he'd just look at it and know, like he'd done with the dog. He didn't, didn't even notice the faint stain on the saddle, which I'd perversely left to set in.
He just put his hands on it and smiled, like I wished he'd do to me. Like I knew some part of him wanted to do to me, but in six years, he hadn't.
The LUCID project had kept us busy enough, threw us around enough, that for the first time in a while my mind was occupied with something other than the question why.
They sent us back through Hogan's Alley, made me use my fucking government issue service pistol, which I fucking hated. I will never understand the positioning of the magazine release on a Glock 17, which sits right under the thumb for ease. Too much ease. Must have dropped a thousand clips on the fucking floor.
Looks less than intimidating when you're securing a suspect with a drawn weapon and the clip thuds out onto your toe, then your partner laughs at you. Con found it funny, but I'd have found it aggravating as hell in any real combat situation. I never carried a nine on duty, always a .45mm. Habit, and I like a gun that's solid metal.
Con never gave me shit about that. As a cop, he'd seen people absorb hits from the smaller rounds and keep going. Hell, he'd done it, had the scar to prove it. Not even Rambo would shrug off a hit from his Colt or my S&W.
But when you're training, you have to go with the safe route. That meant the Glock, which meant I dropped magazines all over the fucking place. We ran Hogan's half a million times, playing counterpoint to the new FBI and CIA agents in training. We learned that town inside and out. Sights, smells. Every texture. We memorized it so we could reproduce it in our minds with letter-perfect detail. Gave us an easily referenced set of visualizations to get the computers to pick up. When they could interpret our memories, we'd dream our way through.
By that point, I was dreaming of the place anyway. Spend enough time staring at tile patterns or wood grains with various sensors hooked up to your head, and your dreaming mind has a lot of useless information to work with.
Con looked better than he had in a while - he was sleeping all day almost, it was more than he got in some weeks, I'd have bet. Dark circles vanished from beneath his eyes, he was sharp as hell, and really good at processing information in a way the computer could understand. The images the machine got from him were clearly defined, sharp - but silent. Like watching a home movie of the inside of his head.
Me, I was suddenly a bit worried. How did you control what you pictured at any given second? What if my mind wandered? I'm sure some of that was expected, hell - Con's mind occasionally strayed to things like his mother, which the computer showed as he saw her - kind of overbearing, but warm. Taller than she actually was. I wondered what he thought of me. My performance suffered a bit, the scientists noticed us both getting a bit self-conscious, and stopped showing us the results. We'd seen that the pictures were there and clear, that was enough. Without having to focus too hard on what could possibly show up on the tapes, our minds actually wandered less.
Most of our work at that early stage was with a PASIV, while they exhaustively worked the kinks out of the prototype LUCID unit - signal strengths, actual physical interfacing issues. PASIV units rely on proximity, amplifying received brainwaves into their own wireless digital space. They're sensitive as hell but - sit too far away and your dream gets out of synch with the other dreamers. Your brain waves, picked up externally, can only be amplified so much.
It was found that there was just no possible way to amplify ours externally to workable levels for distance broadcasting. It was like putting a microphone on stage, but having the singer stand ten feet back, projecting his voice in that direction. the people in front can hear, but the mic can't pick up enough to get the back of the audience rocking.
So they came up with the second prototype in August, referred to with equal parts horror and pride as the 'long needle' prototype. Two guesses why, and the first doesn't count. First of all, the 'needle' wasn't actually like a hypodermic but a complicated receptor I couldn't even begin to explain. Kind of like a radio antenna, only it went into my brainstem. Risky stuff, but there was no denying that the results were instantly better. They'd precisely machine-position and insert two four-inch needle receptors, one in the left and one in the right brainstem, every time we needed to run LUCID tests. They'd go in under the back ridge of the skull, high on our necks.
It was hellish, and Con and I'd go out again after they were removed and the tests were completed into the parking lot with gauze pads taped onto the shaved parts of our heads, and smoke half-packs of cigarettes. It was the only way we could face going back in - they'd never sedated us for it of course - and doing it all again.
It was Con, white knuckled in his seat with his chin on his chest and doing his best not to flinch as the second needle slid home into a space that would surely start to scar around it soon enough that he asked finally, in a strained voice, "Jesus, can't you just leave it in?"
Give a tech scientist an idea and it'll stick for good. They began to design permanent receptors, - I guess basing the tech off of cochlear implants, and they'd eventually be permanently installed in our heads. The idea sounded more appealing each time.
We were still on long needles when they'd satisfied themselves with the ability of the machine to reliably and stably broadcast us into the targeted dreamshare. It was time to build the structure back end of the LUCID interface - the 'home' area where we were in our own space. The machine would append the space it created onto the foreign network, allowing us passage into the other dream.
It sensed the areas of most activity, so we didn't have to search the whole dream over for the dreamers. Because it was tailored to us specifically, the machine worked better for us at recognizing commands and producing the intended functional result.
We found the best way to regulate our thought patterns into commands the machine would recognize (and not mistake) was to vocalize.
This done, they put us under the first few times - like a construction crew - to figure out how we wanted the back end of LUCID to work visually and tactilely.
-
LUCID LOG, HR. 1 - SHARED
Nothing. Consciousness but little else. A nebulous feeling, like existence but in a void. Disappointment. PASIV dreams are much less... utilitarian.
I hardly have an impression of up or down, and my mind reaches out to build what it can, conjuring from my past. I slowly orient myself, sort up from down, and find green grass racing into formation, away until it meets a tall pine wood. An overcast sky. Upstate New York, I think idly. Better than nothing, even If I have no idea why the woods came back to me first. I hate this place.
I barely have a chance to register Constantine beside me, wind kicking up through his hair, here at the center of my darkness.
Then we wake.
-
We both agreed that a structure was more practical, something solid and comforting to our human sub-consciouses, and I'd admitted I'd just put down what I could into the space to help me get oriented. But once the woods were there, they refused to go. We just built on top of it at last, after a half dozen frustrating attempts to overwrite it only to find it waiting for us again the next time we went under.
"We should just build a cabin, by this point," Con said, in exasperation. Way too close to home.
"No cabins," I answered firmly, not letting how averse I was to the idea show through. "Put something solid up, it should at least look a little professional, christ."
-
LUCID LOG HR. 12 - SHARED
I'm getting the hang of this at last, I think. Constantine's Lobby is a masterwork he'll never admit, simply executed but ideal for this. He's not an architect, but instead a programmer - knowing how to suggest himself into the format of dreams.
"What are you - are you looking at the floor?" he asks, self consciously. "It's cement."
"You remember cement this good?" I ask, and reach out to touch it - the feel's wrong, but it looks right.
"Yeah," he says, crossing his arms over his chest. "I see it every day, don't you?"
"I guess I do," I realize, but I never paid that much attention to it. I saw it, sure, but I was hardly looking at it.
"All that time in Hogan's Alley memorizing paint colors and you didn't get any more observant," Con sighs. "Anyway, I figured this was okay. Lots of doors out, could go anywhere. We can verbal cue the machine to make them what we want, and our minds won't have to work too hard, even."
It's simple, easy to remember, even as he evolved the space into something with a little more personality. More cover, my mind observed automatically, like there'd be any firefights. But we both have instincts that feel more secure when there'd be a place to duck behind should gun shots ring out.
One thing I notice is that there aren't any projections. They populated every area they could, logically, in our PASIV dreams. The mind does not like to feel alone, and so it fills in bodies where there should logically be some. Since we'd started using the LUCID, I hadn't seen even one.
"Seems empty," I say, and Con shrugs. He doesn't mind, I suppose, and I'm inclined to agree. We don't need our subconscious out in the open when we're working, after all.
He meanders around, and I look out of the big glass windows that line one wall - they face the pine woods, and if I could change one thing about this place, it'd be that. There's no way to bring it up without arousing his suspicion, so I don't ask. I just face it.
-
We were allowed to begin logging solo testing hours shortly afterward. Getting our minds used to working in the space with no distractions. The idea was to make it instinctive, but I had been waiting for my chances to do this for a very long time.
I'd been practically a saint since we'd moved to D.C. Even though my days working (sleeping) freed up most of my nights, I still needed some natural sleep. But even with the ability to stay out until two or three a.m. and still get the sleep I needed to function, I hadn't.
When we'd started, I hadn't noticed it. But by late 2008 my libido noticed how badly I'd neglected it. I had a bunch of wet dreams, worse than the shit I had in high school. Sitting still was beginning to make me crazy - not angry, just fucking horny.
It was a dream that gave me this idea - and I knew it might not be the best one, but I figured until Constantine and I finally sorted shit out between us, it'd do. Keep me from having to resort to shit like Reece.
A dream took less courage than actually asking him, and now that we were in this up to our fucking eyeballs, I could hardly bear to risk shutting him down now. For whatever reason, he still either couldn't get around his own rules, or the agency policies, or he just wasn't ready.
It was getting harder to face those looks he gave me, eyes wide open down into his thoughts, where just beneath the surface he was in love. How or why, I had no idea. The more time passed, the less I felt like I deserved it.
So I dreamed. I dreamed us together. Innocently at first, just dreams of him - his mouth, his body, out of any plausible context so there was no chance of getting lost - giving me enough pleasure to take the edge off. For the first few times, that was more than enough. And then - it just wasn't. My mind wouldn't ease into it, kept protesting the implausibility of the situation. My training - how did I get here - was too good for idle fantasy to carry me through.
I didn't know if the techs ever went back and checked those logs. If they did, they were fucking champions of professionalism, because they never said anything, never looked at me unusually. They occasionally tested the command structure I was supposedly building, so I would log double hours on the machine, not wanting to fall behind. There'd be questions if I did.
I didn't even have to miss any sleep. It became easier to forget how much of Constantine I was missing, because in my dreams, he was there. I got irritable, a little, but overall things felt like they were really working out at last. And I had time - all the time I needed once we got this thing off the ground. Time enough for Constantine to figure himself out, once we both were done with this distraction.
-
The weakness started in my knees.
Some errant misfire of nerves, which abruptly disconnected me, severed everything into a folding heap, unsalvageable and earthbound.
I was left without a leg to stand on.
It happened in the shower the first time, and I wondered - did I maybe just fall asleep for a moment? The numbness I could write off as a result of my collision with the plastic floor, the breathlessness as shocking my own diaphragm into airless heaves.
It was two days after Thanksgiving, wearing on toward another year again, and I'd logged maybe two dozen hours of time on the machine that week. Just, that I instinctively knew that's what it was, causing this disconnect in my nerves as surely as it allowed my disconnect from reality. I was left helpless and dazed for perhaps ten minutes, feeling like my soul had been briefly split from my body and I wasn't sure which part my identity was supposed to follow.
But it went away, quick as it had come, turned itself off and I got up, rinsed the soap out of my tearing eyes and finished my shower before the water got frigid.
I thought about calling Con, but I knew how he'd dig into it, see that I was under so much more than he was. Also, we'd worked so hard for this and I didn't want to monkeywrench it over a feeling. Hell, it could have been not enough real sleep or low blood sugar. I could have been getting a cold. And if I was completely honest with myself, I couldn't stand to lose access to my own dreams - not now, not when I'd finally gotten it where I wanted.
So I didn't say anything, and it went away for a while. Long enough to get me into the new year. Over the end of year holidays, I got some distance from it. Spent some time with Con for real.
We laughed and drank and watched football, and I felt pretty good that I never once forgot myself. The bags were coming back under his eyes for one thing, and in my dreams his eyes didn't make the rest of him a liar.
I think that was the first time I really questioned what I'd seen in him. Like perhaps I'd only seen what I wanted, and even now I was only looking for echoes of the Constantine in my dreams, possibly even my own memories - by that point, they were suspect. I'd begun to lose track of what parts I had already re-lived in dream.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: OMC/OMC (David Serkey/Constantine Fitzweiss)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 33,424
Summary: CIA Agents David and Constantine are partners in the Agency's Mindcrime division, working on a new project to combat the illegal usage of PASIV devices for extraction. There is also a secret, a lot of damage, and a slow train-ride into hell.
WARNINGS: Violence, some graphic imagery, and slash of course. David is not a healthy guy.
Project codename LUCID - a device for combating the illegal use of another device. The anti-PASIV. I found it funny that the only way to fight the illicit use of technology was with more, in an age where less technology was supposed to be required. Hell, my phone did more shit than my first computer. But there was always that question of how to combat mindcrime - which to that point hadn't gotten that ambitious. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take launch codes from the mind of some third world dictator, we figured. So we were behind, but trying to anticipate where the technology would next be used and how. To keep ahead of the problem as best we could - or ahead of where the problem would be when the technology was finally ready.
The actual original prototype wasn't too impressive. It drew from a half million images to create a rough visual representation, and I mean very rough. Soundless. But it caught the first dream I showed it okay. It seemed a bit like a fortune telling sort of trick, vague enough to be close no matter what I'd dreamed. The scientists were proud, though, and Cixous said it'd get a hell of a lot better as it learned to better interpret our patterns of though and provide visual information pulled directly from us instead of mocked up from a database.
Like a speech to text program, it had to learn our 'voice' through exposure, correction, re-exposure, re-correction.
Like teaching a kid, only the kid had to produce visual data from our dreams. Sound was a secondary goal. After that, we'd learn to use it to access other active networks, and see if we could record the dreams of others as interpreted through our known-quantity thought patterns. That shouldn't be the hard part. The brain almost instinctively worked to dreamshare, once the PASIV had set up the local neural network for the Somnacin users. Strange to think the chemical had first been in-use - unrefined, of course, by aboriginal Australians. For how long, god only knows.
We could not sign enough times. Damage claim waivers, affidavits of risk assessment and understanding, oaths of secrecy and our special clearance paperwork. The long and short of it being that we'd be in D.C. for the foreseeable future.
I had to go back to sort my shit in Chicago the second week, get out of my apartment, that sort of shit. Con was keeping his, and his Ma would drive up and keep it tidied every couple weeks, he said. Offered to have her look after my place too, if I wanted.
I thought of what Con's Ma might find, poking around in my apartment and declined. I didn't really want that place anymore anyway. I figured when we finally got back - if we weren't the permanent pets of the D.C. branch after this - I'd find another place easy enough.
Con drove me to the airport like a sport, both of us still bursting with enthusiasm, and we drank shitty airport coffee after I'd checked in and while I waited for my plane to stop delaying.
"Hey, would you turn my bike over?" Constantine asked, as if in after-thought. He fished his keys out of his pocket and pulled the black topped Suzuki key out from the rest, followed it with his apartment key. I'd been dying to try his bike since I'd seen the thing, but had never had good opportunity to ask. It's not the sort of bike I'd have matched to Constantine - who I'd have been reluctant to guess owned a bike at all, except I'd seen it myself.
"Yeah," I said, keeping it casual. Would I put myself in the saddle of one of the fastest street legal bikes in production today? Is that even a fucking question? I took the keys, one to get into his place and fetch the safety gear, the other for his bike. The Hayabusa.
"Thanks, man. It's not good for it to just sit too long. Might be a little slow even at this point." I could tell leaving his machine even this long was killing him a bit. I knew what it was like to not have something you wanted.
"Don't worry, I'll flush it out and get it going," I promised, and got on the plane - already making plans. I'd take the bike back - ride it down to D.C. It'd take a few extra days and probably leave me saddlesore as all hell, but it'd be worth every second. Not just for him either - I wanted some quality time with that bike. His bike.
On the plane, I tucked the keys into my wallet, had a brief peek at the card tucked away in there - since I couldn't test reality on a plane with my radio without riling all kinds of FCC regulations - and I wasn't convinced there was anything amiss anyway. Just checking.
It didn't take me too long to deal with my apartment. I packed a little stuff - clothes, every day items, and mailed it ahead of myself back to D.C. Threw away the bad food in my fridge, put the canned goods out for Harvesters. The rest, I took to good will and dumped. My car was even a lease, so I just took that back, too. The dealership kicked the tires, hemmed and hawed, and finally we shook hands, even. I didn't care - I'd get another lease in D.C. What I wanted, as I took the bus over to Con's place, was to get my hands on the Hayabusa.
It was a little surreal, heading into his place when I knew he was halfway across the country. Four years later and he even still had the same dog leash on the peg by the door, the collar with tags from '04. Just something that was never in the way enough for him to get up the heart to get rid of it. I left a note for his Ma about the bike, then found his riding jacket, his helmet, and the spare. Theoretically, so he could take someone along, but I'd never seen him let anyone ride double. The spare was too small for my head, so I wore Con's. The sensation was somewhere between a kid playing dress up, in leather no less, and feeling like I should worry about this becoming some sort of new fetish for me.
The jacket smelled like Con's aftershave, like old rides in the sun. The helmet still carried the scent of his shampoo. I took it off quickly - too close, too much of him and yeah, I had permission, but not to do this. I'd get the bike started, then deal with the rest of it.
So maybe, as I approached that powerful machine of Constantine's, I was in an even less normal frame of mind than I usually am. I never liked rice rockets before I met him, fast or not. I made an exception for the Hayabusa. It was Constantine's, a fact that I felt acutely as I pulled off the cover and settled into the saddle.
It felt a bit strange, like it was used to a whole other body - and of course it was but I had to shift around until I realized I was supposed to almost lie forward in the seat, the padding positioned to support me that way, as I'd seen Con ride the thing.
I had a moment, after I put the key in the ignition, where my mind blanked on how to get it started. I hadn't ridden at all in a while, and I pulled out my cell phone to call Con so he could walk me through it, but after the second ring I remembered. I clicked the phone closed again and hit the electric starter, feeling like an idiot.
The bike coughed, made a bit of a shrill protest, and then turned over roughly, shocking its whole frame with reverberations as the powerful engine caught. The meters turned on, cycled, then read, but my mind went away briefly as it idled roughly between my legs. God, powerful. Harsh, too, from sitting. The engine churned in subtle vibrations - not so subtle as they transferred through the frame and saddle, seeming to head straight to my crotch.
I couldn't help it. I put one hand down on the front of the seat, fingers splaying forward over the gas tank, and arched my back, rubbing myself against the leather. Jesus, and Con had been keeping this all to himself.
I arched into it a few times, then reached for the accelerator and revved the engine which growled louder and covered my gasping. I didn't care, suddenly, I was going to rub myself on Con's fucking bike until I came and figure out what to do about my pants later.
A sudden counter vibration startled me, and I dropped my hand off the accelerator, dazedly trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. It wasn't the bike, though - it was my cell phone going off in my pocket, fuck. I shouldn't have answered it, didn't know how I'd keep myself in check with his voice in my ear - but suddenly I had to hear him. Needed it.
"Serkey," I answered - the usual way at least, best I could as I rubbed lewdly on the seat.
"Everything okay? Missed your call." Constantine said, utterly clueless. For the best, but his voice is just what I wanted. I push down harder.
"Yeah, Con," I said, controlling my tone. "I just forgot how to start - how to start your bike for a second."
I bit my lip against a groan, reached again, revved, and - that, that was almost it.
"Sounds like you remembered. It go okay for you?" he asks, his tone some how found and proud, like I have to fucking love the bike now that I've been on it, and I fucking do, but he'd never imagine this. Or maybe he did, sometimes I don't know. He started talking about what I'd need to know, riding. Expecting me to take it for a spin, but my concentration just wouldn't split that far - all I knew was that his voice was in my ears, and that fucking bike was growling away , smoothing out regular, and I shot my fucking load. Somehow, I stayed quiet, even though I came hard enough for some to even make it past my jeans in an obscene smear on the leather.
"What are you doing to my bike?" Con asked, into my silence.
"Nothing. I thought I heard a problem - " I answered, breathless and distracted. There was a smear of darkness on the saddle leather, and I reached out with my free hand, carefully rubbed it in with my thumb.
"Sounds fine to me," Con said, and I laughed a little, still not quite back.
"Yeah," I said, covered the receiver with my thumb as I gasped in air, then slid it off again to finish. "Yeah, must have been wrong. Just double-checking."
"You got it now?" He laughed, and I almost nodded, as if he were right there.
"Yeah. Gonna take it out and get it going for you," I told him, my voice rough, failing to make that sound like anything but a proposition. "Call you later."
-
He was overjoyed when I showed up with the bike. Some paranoid part of me almost thought he'd just look at it and know, like he'd done with the dog. He didn't, didn't even notice the faint stain on the saddle, which I'd perversely left to set in.
He just put his hands on it and smiled, like I wished he'd do to me. Like I knew some part of him wanted to do to me, but in six years, he hadn't.
The LUCID project had kept us busy enough, threw us around enough, that for the first time in a while my mind was occupied with something other than the question why.
They sent us back through Hogan's Alley, made me use my fucking government issue service pistol, which I fucking hated. I will never understand the positioning of the magazine release on a Glock 17, which sits right under the thumb for ease. Too much ease. Must have dropped a thousand clips on the fucking floor.
Looks less than intimidating when you're securing a suspect with a drawn weapon and the clip thuds out onto your toe, then your partner laughs at you. Con found it funny, but I'd have found it aggravating as hell in any real combat situation. I never carried a nine on duty, always a .45mm. Habit, and I like a gun that's solid metal.
Con never gave me shit about that. As a cop, he'd seen people absorb hits from the smaller rounds and keep going. Hell, he'd done it, had the scar to prove it. Not even Rambo would shrug off a hit from his Colt or my S&W.
But when you're training, you have to go with the safe route. That meant the Glock, which meant I dropped magazines all over the fucking place. We ran Hogan's half a million times, playing counterpoint to the new FBI and CIA agents in training. We learned that town inside and out. Sights, smells. Every texture. We memorized it so we could reproduce it in our minds with letter-perfect detail. Gave us an easily referenced set of visualizations to get the computers to pick up. When they could interpret our memories, we'd dream our way through.
By that point, I was dreaming of the place anyway. Spend enough time staring at tile patterns or wood grains with various sensors hooked up to your head, and your dreaming mind has a lot of useless information to work with.
Con looked better than he had in a while - he was sleeping all day almost, it was more than he got in some weeks, I'd have bet. Dark circles vanished from beneath his eyes, he was sharp as hell, and really good at processing information in a way the computer could understand. The images the machine got from him were clearly defined, sharp - but silent. Like watching a home movie of the inside of his head.
Me, I was suddenly a bit worried. How did you control what you pictured at any given second? What if my mind wandered? I'm sure some of that was expected, hell - Con's mind occasionally strayed to things like his mother, which the computer showed as he saw her - kind of overbearing, but warm. Taller than she actually was. I wondered what he thought of me. My performance suffered a bit, the scientists noticed us both getting a bit self-conscious, and stopped showing us the results. We'd seen that the pictures were there and clear, that was enough. Without having to focus too hard on what could possibly show up on the tapes, our minds actually wandered less.
Most of our work at that early stage was with a PASIV, while they exhaustively worked the kinks out of the prototype LUCID unit - signal strengths, actual physical interfacing issues. PASIV units rely on proximity, amplifying received brainwaves into their own wireless digital space. They're sensitive as hell but - sit too far away and your dream gets out of synch with the other dreamers. Your brain waves, picked up externally, can only be amplified so much.
It was found that there was just no possible way to amplify ours externally to workable levels for distance broadcasting. It was like putting a microphone on stage, but having the singer stand ten feet back, projecting his voice in that direction. the people in front can hear, but the mic can't pick up enough to get the back of the audience rocking.
So they came up with the second prototype in August, referred to with equal parts horror and pride as the 'long needle' prototype. Two guesses why, and the first doesn't count. First of all, the 'needle' wasn't actually like a hypodermic but a complicated receptor I couldn't even begin to explain. Kind of like a radio antenna, only it went into my brainstem. Risky stuff, but there was no denying that the results were instantly better. They'd precisely machine-position and insert two four-inch needle receptors, one in the left and one in the right brainstem, every time we needed to run LUCID tests. They'd go in under the back ridge of the skull, high on our necks.
It was hellish, and Con and I'd go out again after they were removed and the tests were completed into the parking lot with gauze pads taped onto the shaved parts of our heads, and smoke half-packs of cigarettes. It was the only way we could face going back in - they'd never sedated us for it of course - and doing it all again.
It was Con, white knuckled in his seat with his chin on his chest and doing his best not to flinch as the second needle slid home into a space that would surely start to scar around it soon enough that he asked finally, in a strained voice, "Jesus, can't you just leave it in?"
Give a tech scientist an idea and it'll stick for good. They began to design permanent receptors, - I guess basing the tech off of cochlear implants, and they'd eventually be permanently installed in our heads. The idea sounded more appealing each time.
We were still on long needles when they'd satisfied themselves with the ability of the machine to reliably and stably broadcast us into the targeted dreamshare. It was time to build the structure back end of the LUCID interface - the 'home' area where we were in our own space. The machine would append the space it created onto the foreign network, allowing us passage into the other dream.
It sensed the areas of most activity, so we didn't have to search the whole dream over for the dreamers. Because it was tailored to us specifically, the machine worked better for us at recognizing commands and producing the intended functional result.
We found the best way to regulate our thought patterns into commands the machine would recognize (and not mistake) was to vocalize.
This done, they put us under the first few times - like a construction crew - to figure out how we wanted the back end of LUCID to work visually and tactilely.
-
LUCID LOG, HR. 1 - SHARED
Nothing. Consciousness but little else. A nebulous feeling, like existence but in a void. Disappointment. PASIV dreams are much less... utilitarian.
I hardly have an impression of up or down, and my mind reaches out to build what it can, conjuring from my past. I slowly orient myself, sort up from down, and find green grass racing into formation, away until it meets a tall pine wood. An overcast sky. Upstate New York, I think idly. Better than nothing, even If I have no idea why the woods came back to me first. I hate this place.
I barely have a chance to register Constantine beside me, wind kicking up through his hair, here at the center of my darkness.
Then we wake.
-
We both agreed that a structure was more practical, something solid and comforting to our human sub-consciouses, and I'd admitted I'd just put down what I could into the space to help me get oriented. But once the woods were there, they refused to go. We just built on top of it at last, after a half dozen frustrating attempts to overwrite it only to find it waiting for us again the next time we went under.
"We should just build a cabin, by this point," Con said, in exasperation. Way too close to home.
"No cabins," I answered firmly, not letting how averse I was to the idea show through. "Put something solid up, it should at least look a little professional, christ."
-
LUCID LOG HR. 12 - SHARED
I'm getting the hang of this at last, I think. Constantine's Lobby is a masterwork he'll never admit, simply executed but ideal for this. He's not an architect, but instead a programmer - knowing how to suggest himself into the format of dreams.
"What are you - are you looking at the floor?" he asks, self consciously. "It's cement."
"You remember cement this good?" I ask, and reach out to touch it - the feel's wrong, but it looks right.
"Yeah," he says, crossing his arms over his chest. "I see it every day, don't you?"
"I guess I do," I realize, but I never paid that much attention to it. I saw it, sure, but I was hardly looking at it.
"All that time in Hogan's Alley memorizing paint colors and you didn't get any more observant," Con sighs. "Anyway, I figured this was okay. Lots of doors out, could go anywhere. We can verbal cue the machine to make them what we want, and our minds won't have to work too hard, even."
It's simple, easy to remember, even as he evolved the space into something with a little more personality. More cover, my mind observed automatically, like there'd be any firefights. But we both have instincts that feel more secure when there'd be a place to duck behind should gun shots ring out.
One thing I notice is that there aren't any projections. They populated every area they could, logically, in our PASIV dreams. The mind does not like to feel alone, and so it fills in bodies where there should logically be some. Since we'd started using the LUCID, I hadn't seen even one.
"Seems empty," I say, and Con shrugs. He doesn't mind, I suppose, and I'm inclined to agree. We don't need our subconscious out in the open when we're working, after all.
He meanders around, and I look out of the big glass windows that line one wall - they face the pine woods, and if I could change one thing about this place, it'd be that. There's no way to bring it up without arousing his suspicion, so I don't ask. I just face it.
-
We were allowed to begin logging solo testing hours shortly afterward. Getting our minds used to working in the space with no distractions. The idea was to make it instinctive, but I had been waiting for my chances to do this for a very long time.
I'd been practically a saint since we'd moved to D.C. Even though my days working (sleeping) freed up most of my nights, I still needed some natural sleep. But even with the ability to stay out until two or three a.m. and still get the sleep I needed to function, I hadn't.
When we'd started, I hadn't noticed it. But by late 2008 my libido noticed how badly I'd neglected it. I had a bunch of wet dreams, worse than the shit I had in high school. Sitting still was beginning to make me crazy - not angry, just fucking horny.
It was a dream that gave me this idea - and I knew it might not be the best one, but I figured until Constantine and I finally sorted shit out between us, it'd do. Keep me from having to resort to shit like Reece.
A dream took less courage than actually asking him, and now that we were in this up to our fucking eyeballs, I could hardly bear to risk shutting him down now. For whatever reason, he still either couldn't get around his own rules, or the agency policies, or he just wasn't ready.
It was getting harder to face those looks he gave me, eyes wide open down into his thoughts, where just beneath the surface he was in love. How or why, I had no idea. The more time passed, the less I felt like I deserved it.
So I dreamed. I dreamed us together. Innocently at first, just dreams of him - his mouth, his body, out of any plausible context so there was no chance of getting lost - giving me enough pleasure to take the edge off. For the first few times, that was more than enough. And then - it just wasn't. My mind wouldn't ease into it, kept protesting the implausibility of the situation. My training - how did I get here - was too good for idle fantasy to carry me through.
I didn't know if the techs ever went back and checked those logs. If they did, they were fucking champions of professionalism, because they never said anything, never looked at me unusually. They occasionally tested the command structure I was supposedly building, so I would log double hours on the machine, not wanting to fall behind. There'd be questions if I did.
I didn't even have to miss any sleep. It became easier to forget how much of Constantine I was missing, because in my dreams, he was there. I got irritable, a little, but overall things felt like they were really working out at last. And I had time - all the time I needed once we got this thing off the ground. Time enough for Constantine to figure himself out, once we both were done with this distraction.
-
The weakness started in my knees.
Some errant misfire of nerves, which abruptly disconnected me, severed everything into a folding heap, unsalvageable and earthbound.
I was left without a leg to stand on.
It happened in the shower the first time, and I wondered - did I maybe just fall asleep for a moment? The numbness I could write off as a result of my collision with the plastic floor, the breathlessness as shocking my own diaphragm into airless heaves.
It was two days after Thanksgiving, wearing on toward another year again, and I'd logged maybe two dozen hours of time on the machine that week. Just, that I instinctively knew that's what it was, causing this disconnect in my nerves as surely as it allowed my disconnect from reality. I was left helpless and dazed for perhaps ten minutes, feeling like my soul had been briefly split from my body and I wasn't sure which part my identity was supposed to follow.
But it went away, quick as it had come, turned itself off and I got up, rinsed the soap out of my tearing eyes and finished my shower before the water got frigid.
I thought about calling Con, but I knew how he'd dig into it, see that I was under so much more than he was. Also, we'd worked so hard for this and I didn't want to monkeywrench it over a feeling. Hell, it could have been not enough real sleep or low blood sugar. I could have been getting a cold. And if I was completely honest with myself, I couldn't stand to lose access to my own dreams - not now, not when I'd finally gotten it where I wanted.
So I didn't say anything, and it went away for a while. Long enough to get me into the new year. Over the end of year holidays, I got some distance from it. Spent some time with Con for real.
We laughed and drank and watched football, and I felt pretty good that I never once forgot myself. The bags were coming back under his eyes for one thing, and in my dreams his eyes didn't make the rest of him a liar.
I think that was the first time I really questioned what I'd seen in him. Like perhaps I'd only seen what I wanted, and even now I was only looking for echoes of the Constantine in my dreams, possibly even my own memories - by that point, they were suspect. I'd begun to lose track of what parts I had already re-lived in dream.